‘Does he? I thought he was quite proud of it.’
Mrs Chadwick shook her head. ‘He has no feeling for anything if it gets in his way. He wants to clear the view of Riddings Edge from his terrace.’
‘I see.’
‘Those trees are dying out in their native habitat, you know. Climate change is causing forest fires in Chile.’
‘That’s very interesting. But…?’
She nodded, and looked at her husband. Cooper had the feeling they must have discussed this long and hard, maybe all week. Had it taken them five days, ever since the death of Zoe Barron, to make their minds up about what to do? What had convinced them in the end? he wondered. Another death? Or two, even. The deaths of Martin Holland and Jake Barron had intervened.
‘We didn’t come forward before, because it seemed to us that it would only complicate matters,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘The situation here is worrying enough, after all. And we kept hearing that police resources were overstretched. We didn’t want to distract you from doing your job with irrelevant information.’
‘When you say “we”…?’
‘Bill and I talked it over, of course. And…’
‘Who else?’
‘Well, we discussed it with one of our neighbours.’ She pointed vaguely to the north. ‘Mr Nowak, at Lane End.’
‘This is about Tuesday night?’ said Cooper impatiently. ‘The time of the attack at Valley View.’
‘Yes. There were people in the village that night, you see. Oh, I know that sounds strange. There are always people in the village. And it’s not always clear why. But these were different.’
Her husband couldn’t resist butting in.
‘Russell Edson used to have parties, you know,’ he said. ‘All kinds of people came then. But they haven’t taken place for a while. That’s why we noticed, I suppose.’
‘Did you see any vehicles at all?’ asked Cooper.
‘Nothing unusual.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘Well… one. Though the vehicle itself wasn’t unusual. We see it in the village all the time. But it was a bit late for it to be around.’
‘A bit late?’
Mrs Chadwick looked at Cooper rather too brightly.
‘Yes, late. After all, you don’t do much gardening in the dark, do you?’
When he got back to his car, Cooper wondered whether to return to the office. There was a nagging voice at the back of his mind – a constant muttering of anxiety, a fretful whisper reeling off all the possible developments at Bridge End he should be worried about. But he knew that if he stopped to listen to it, he would never do anything else. He had to find something to occupy his mind. Carol Villiers had been right. He had to focus, and stay focused.
A call came in before he could make up his mind what to do next.
‘Gavin? Have you got some news?’
‘Yes. I was feeling particularly spiteful today, so I decided to check on Mr Edson’s alibi for Tuesday night.’
‘He was out for dinner,’ said Cooper.
‘Yes.’
‘You checked up with the restaurant? What made you do that?’
‘I don’t like him. Is that a good enough reason?’
‘It’ll do for me, Gavin.’
‘When we visited him, I remember him being very specific about what he and his mother ordered. Migratory ducks and all that.’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘To me that suggested a very good memory. Or more likely that he’d made a note of it, so that he could sound totally convincing if he was asked about it later.’
‘Gavin, sometimes I love your appalling cynicism.’
‘It gets results,’ said Murfin modestly. ‘See, by doing that, he wasn’t actually telling us a lie. Only by omission, anyway.’
‘Go on, then. What was it he omitted to mention?’
‘That it wasn’t just him and his mother who were supposed to be eating at Bauers that night. They had a table booked for three.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘They know Edson well there. He dines with us often, they said. So I asked who else was in the party. The head waiter sounds the sort of bloke who clocks everything.’ Murfin laughed. ‘A bit like an upmarket Barry Gamble, I suppose.’
‘Yes, Gavin.’
‘Anyway, there was no third person. A table was set for three, but it seems the third person never arrived.’
26
At Riddings Lodge, Cooper found only Glenys Edson at home. In the room packed with antiques, he saw that the glass table was damaged. A jagged crack ran right across it from one edge, shattering the perfect reflection.
‘An accident,’ said Glenys Edson, before he had even asked.
‘What a shame.’
‘These things happen.’
Cooper glanced at the tapestry, remembering his conversation with Gavin Murfin. You can’t just sit and do nothing for hour after hour, day after day. You’d go mad. You’d start tearing up the furniture.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know when Russell will be back,’ she said. ‘He’s taken the car for a spin.’
‘The Jaguar? No, of course not. The MG convertible.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you know where’s he gone?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Mrs Edson, I need you to talk to me about your son. And about Tuesday night.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not telling you anything. Not without Russell here. You’ll have to speak to him.’
‘On Tuesday night, you visited Bauers at Warren Hall. You were dining in the restaurant there. Who else was supposed to be with you?’
Mrs Edson drew herself up as stiffly as she could. ‘I’m afraid that I’m not going to be answering your questions.’
‘You know this is a murder inquiry?’
But he could see that meant nothing to her.
‘You’ll have to arrest me then,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, Detective Sergeant, I’ll ask you to leave.’
Frustrated, Cooper peered through the gates of Riddings Lodge as he used his phone to call the office. He got through to Gavin Murfin.
‘How are they getting on with the slurry pits, do you know?’
‘They’ve got two pumps set up to remove the liquid, but there are several inches of thick mud at the bottom, which is slowing the job down. I’m told the smell is appalling.’
‘Oh, I can imagine.’
‘In fact, we’re starting to get complaints from the residents in Riddings,’ said Murfin. ‘I guess the wind must be blowing in the wrong direction.’
‘I hope to God they find something,’ said Cooper. ‘Otherwise they’re going to throw me into one of those slurry pits.’
‘We’ve found the van, though.’
‘The gardener’s van? AJS Gardening Services?’
‘That’s the one. Dumped in a lane behind Riddings. No sign of the owner, Mr Summers. Luke Irvine is there.’
Cooper was at the location within a couple of minutes. The doors of the van had already been opened. In the back, among the gardening tools, he found a small pile of stainless-steel posts, each measuring over three feet long. They were the kind of thing used for preventing parking on grass verges. Very popular in Riddings.
He picked one up and slapped it against his palm.
‘These must weigh about eight pounds each.’
‘Good enough for the job,’ said Irvine.
‘A bit unwieldy, I would have thought. But if that was what came to hand… a thing this size would certainly strike fear into your victim.’
‘What are they exactly?’
‘These are the posts they embed in the ground to stop people parking on the grass,’ said Cooper.
‘So they are. I tripped over one the other day.’
‘And I parked up against one. I don’t know if these are the exact posts used in the attack on the Barrons. But somewhere in Riddings, there’ll be at least one with traces of Zoe Barron’s blood on it.’
Since Edson had left the Jaguar behind at Riddings Lodge, Cooper called in and asked for the search to be extended to the car. He remembered the thorough cleaning it had received earlier in the week, a handyman in waterproof trousers working away on the bodywork under Edson’s eagle eye. If any evidence was available to be found, the interior was likely to provide more traces.